Wonders of the Mekong (2017-2025)

The USAID-funded Wonders of the Mekong project applied research, capacity building, and outreach to solve conservation and development challenges in the Mekong sub-region. These challenges included overexploitation of natural resources, habitat degradation and fragmentation, flow modification, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and pollution. The project engaged in simultaneous efforts to gather and synthesize environmental data, conduct training, and build an informed constituency that can advocate for science-based management, policy, and sustainable development. Successes achieved by the program included implementation of interdisciplinary research projects documenting novel biodiversity, assessments of water quality and forest health and community-engaged research on transboundary fisheries, capacity building including the building of advanced facilities (e.g., monitoring water quality including plastics, climate gasses like carbon and nitrogen, and biodiversity), training of one of Southeast Asia’s largest cohorts of scientists focused on Mekong issues, recognition of Mekong Conservation Heroes, and communications products that have reached hundreds of millions of people.